Office computer systems ordinarily include a network that couples several workstation computers together with shared peripheral equipment, such as a shared printer. The process of printing a document on the shared printer from one of the workstations ordinarily involves the proper cooperation of several programs. These programs, generally called drivers, are developed and frequently re-released by independent software suppliers. To provide wide application of a single driver design, the driver accepts configuration parameters set by the system manager during driver installation. In general, a peripheral is a resource. The process of installation and maintaining operation of the peripheral is called resource administration.
Large office systems with multiple resource servers are subject to costly system failures as a consequence of frequent driver upgrades. Such upgrades necessitate manually transferring files from removable media inserted into the local disk drive of each resource server computer. Considerable system management labor is spent determining, at each resource server, which driver program files are to be replaced and then accurately accomplishing the upgrade. Errors in accomplishing the upgrade lead to system failures related to incompatible combinations of driver program files and configuration parameters. System failures in large offices adversely affect numerous employees and critical business activities.
In view of the problems described above and related problems that consequently become apparent to those skilled in the applicable arts, the need remains in network based computer systems for systems and methods for resource administration and maintaining file systems up to date.
For clarity, many details of distributed processing application program design are omitted from the disclosure below, because they are known in the art. Concepts and terminology used to describe embodiments of the present invention are intended to be consistent with current research, industry standards, and the conventions of the current major manufacturers and developers of computer systems and software. Guidance into the extensive literature that applies to the present invention is provided by: "Developing Client/Server Applications," by W. H. Inmon, QED Publishing Group of Wellesley Mass., 1993; "RPC for NT," by Guy Eddon, R&D Publications of Lawrence Kans., 1994; "Object-Oriented Languages, Systems and Applications," edited by Gordon Blair, et al., Halsted Press of New York N.Y., 1991; "Advanced Windows NT," by Jeffrey Richter, Microsoft Press of Redmond Wash., 1994; and the bibliographies contained in each of these texts.